Just said No

Kanuri Qawi fought the good fight. Imprisoned for a 1991 attack on an Oakland, California, couple, the diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to see the right for mentally ill ex-cons under state care to refuse psychiatric medicine after completing their sentences. He won a landmark victory for America’s imbalanced. Now Qawi has returned to the courts he once owned, having, with a medication-free body, stabbed his roommate to death.

From 1995 to 2004, Qawi had been forced to take antipsychotic medication while undergoing treatment in the Napa State Hospital. The hospital’s medical director told the courts that without it, Qawi posed “a markedly increased risk to the safety and security of staff and patients.” Qawi insisted he was not mentally ill and needed no treatment. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Qawi, whose original jail term stemmed from his belief that the woman he attacked had started the Vietnam war, as a “competent adult,” could decide for himself.

On May 11, he’s expected to enter his plea in the charges of murdering his roommate.

by Scott Saxon